Comments on: Where does the [this is good] meme come from?

Where does the [this is good] meme come from?

Tin Man — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:35:07 -0800

Where does the [this is good] meme come from?

By: justgary

justgary — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:44:39 -0800

I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

(filepile)

By: Tin Man

Tin Man — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:49:42 -0800

Filepile? Could you elaborate?

By: justgary

justgary — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:51:55 -0800

Not much to it really. Piles of files. You can vote [this is good], [this is bad], [this is offensive].

Signups have been closed forever.

And I've said too much ;)

By: justgary

justgary — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 21:01:25 -0800

Did that explain it tin man?

By: Witty

Witty — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 01:09:44 -0800

Tin Man - This is how I know it. At one point, people were asking for a way to "vote" for a post's quality. This would allow a person to sort, for instance, the current threads by said quality. Some people wanted to vote on a scale of 1 to 10, while others thought that a [this is good], [this is bad] (or not voting at all) approach would be better.

This voting system never happened of course, but the result was people posting [this is good] comments as an alternative (inside joke, if you will) way of saying, "I don't have anything to add necessarily, but I like this FPP and think it's good."

No?

By: dg

dg — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 01:49:30 -0800

Yes.

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 04:40:45 -0800

we know nothing! NOTHING!

By: knutmo

knutmo — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 04:41:45 -0800

[this is wrong]

By: DaShiv

DaShiv — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 04:48:08 -0800

[this is not a comment]

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 04:58:43 -0800

Enforcement bots to thread 5872!

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:15:37 -0800

There used to be a site, which never existed and even if it did it doesn't exist any more, called something I forget, where they used this kind of rating system. But the first rule of that site was that no one was allowed to talk about it, because it the influx of users would crash the system. (The site's owner really, really tried to let everyone use it, but it just wasn't feasible.) So even if this site existed, which it doesn't, if you were to ask about it, you would learn that it doesn't exist. Which it doesn't. And never did. And if it did exist, it probably wouldn't be something you'd be interested in anyway.

See?

By: websavvy

websavvy — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:52:41 -0800

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

By: RylandDotNet

RylandDotNet — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:59:38 -0800

Hey, is that a rabbit over there?

By: stx23

stx23 — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:12:41 -0800

Pony!

By: wadner

wadner — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:21:07 -0800

cut cut cut cut cut.

By: briank

briank — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:44:15 -0800

LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!

By: squirrel

squirrel — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:02:08 -0800

This question belongs in AxeMe, no? I have half a mind to haul you in to MetaTalk over this, Tin Man.

Oh. Wait...

By: bshort

bshort — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:39:45 -0800

[Witty is wrong]

By: luriete

luriete — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:10:44 -0800

Justgary, you are SOOOO busted.

By: Tin Man

Tin Man — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:35:43 -0800

I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm sorry I asked...

This question belongs in AxeMe, no?

Isn't AxeMe for non-MeFi-related questions?

[ceci n'est pas une pipe]

By: timeistight

timeistight — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:44:47 -0800

Tin Man - This is how I know it. At one point, people were asking for a way to "vote" for a post's quality. This would allow a person to sort, for instance, the current threads by said quality. Some people wanted to vote on a scale of 1 to 10, while others thought that a [this is good], [this is bad] (or not voting at all) approach would be better.

This voting system never happened of course, but the result was people posting [this is good] comments as an alternative (inside joke, if you will) way of saying, "I don't have anything to add necessarily, but I like this FPP and think it's good."

No?

That's the way I remembered it, too. 'Course I never got a membership to that other site.

By: JohnR

JohnR — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:53:56 -0800

Tin Man ......here is your answer.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:59:44 -0800

Isn't AxeMe for non-MeFi-related questions?

I guess the point is that the "[this is good]" business isn't actually MetaFilter-related, except insofar as the set of MeFi members happens to overlap with members of FilePile.

(I'm not one of the latter, so not bound by their Fight-Club-esque mores. Also, consider: we've noted several times that abbreviations like FPP and MI are distinctly suboptimal, in that they create a barrier between the cognoscenti, or hipster in-crowd, and the casual, or new, user. While "[this is foo]" is certainly self-explanatory in one sense, in another it's at least twice as exclusive -- not only do you have to be an initiate here, you have to be familiar with the culture of another closed community. That seems like a Bad Thing.)

By: muckster

muckster — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:33:41 -0800

Wasn't there some kind of "Best of Mefi" site at some point that was supposed to count [this is good] comments and rate pages that way? At least that's the way I remember it.

[this is long-term memory loss]

By: muckster

muckster — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:43:34 -0800

Oh. What JohnR said.

By: Tin Man

Tin Man — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:51:36 -0800

Yeah, I think that's what JohnR's link refers to, muckster. Thanks, JohnR -- that seems to explain it.

I swear, it's getting damn complicated to keep up with all the in-jokes here. Damn vibrating pancake pony pikes. See, I often felt left out of things when I was a kid, and that followed me into high school. I wasn't cool enough for the cool kids, but I wasn't nerdy enough for the nerdy kids, but I was way more nerdy than cool, so I hung out with the nerdy kids and felt embarrassed by it, secretly wishing I could have been cool enough for the cool kids. I was also a drama geek, which made it more complicated, because some of the drama people hung out with the cool kids, but many of the drama people were the nerdish types.

And when I'm on MeFi sometimes it happens again. Are the MeFi people the cool kids, and do I aspire to be like them? Or are the MeFi people the nerdy kids, and while I'm aspiring to get all the jokes, there's actually a real group of cool kids pointing and laughing at all of us? I don't know.

But maybe there's yet another group of people, pointing and laughing at the "real cool" kids, and another one, so on and so forth, ad inifinitum.

Hey, it's like the Star-Bellied Sneeches! Kinda.

By: Dreamghost

Dreamghost — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:15:27 -0800

I swear, it's getting damn complicated to keep up with all the in-jokes here.

hmm...

1.) Write Metafilter For Dummies?
2.) ?
3.) Profit!

By: justgary

justgary — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 13:32:27 -0800

Yeah, I think that's what JohnR's link refers to, muckster. Thanks, JohnR -- that seems to explain it.

That doesn't explain it. Filepile explains it. People are not using [this is good] because of the site he linked to. It's from filepile. How many people need to tell you this to believe it.

And they're all breaking the rules to do it! Jeez.

;)

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 13:35:58 -0800

not only do you have to be an initiate here, you have to be familiar with the culture of another closed community

what's so inscrutable about [this is good] that you have to be part of two different communities to "get it"? It English. It doesn't mean any more than it says.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:03:56 -0800

Well, if [this is good] belongs to "some other closed community," why don't we use
~this is good~? What could be more MetaFilter than that?

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:29:42 -0800

%because "~" signifies a negation%

Hah! Private languages rule!

By: timeistight

timeistight — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:51:47 -0800

So ~wink~ means not wink (not)?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:07:36 -0800

~!=~

By: jjg

jjg — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:11:41 -0800

And therefore, was (~was) means Was (Not Was)?

Anyway, everybody knows the symbol for negation is !
Determining the meaning of the band name !!! is left as an exercise for the reader.

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 16:31:42 -0800

! is boolean negation
~ is bitwise negation
but ~= is approximately equal to
and !!! are chik-chik-chik (although I used to read it as bang-bang-bang)

By: Secret Life of Gravy

Secret Life of Gravy — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 16:54:44 -0800

~.~

By: basmati

basmati — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 18:24:22 -0800

YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL LICKERS